Albuquerque Real Estate: Sales Down, Prices Steady, Nonsense Published

The DukeCityFix.com website this morning picked up an item from Memphis and blithely republished a claim that “September price reductions” showed Albuquerque with a 35% decrease.
While it’s unclear exactly the timeframe referenced by the Memphis folks (year-over-year?), the claim is nonsense. I have asked DukeCityFix to publish a correction. Here’s the truth. In September, average ($217,677) and median ($183,000) single family detached home prices were up a bit over September 2009.
Overall the metro price pattern appears to be stable-to-increasing. The median single family detached home price was $180,000 for October. This marked the third month out of the past four with an increase on a year-over-year basis. The average price of a metro home was $225,666, a 7% increase from October 2009 and the second highest average price since August 2008. The highest average price for 2010 was $230,213 in July.
The pending sale of 655 single family detached homes was recorded during October, almost the same as the 657 pending sales during September. During October the sale closed on 456 homes, a 4.8% drop from September.
My quick look at the realtors' website (www.gaar.com) indicated that metro single family home prices peaked in June 2007 with an average of about $262,000 and a median of $215,000. By July 2010, the price peak for 2010 to date, the average price was down 12% and the median down 13%.
I don’t know what the Memphis folks have put in their barbeque sauce, but DukeCityFix does harm if they don’t publish an attention getting correction.
On a year-over-year basis, closed sales continue well below 2009 when sales reflected the first-time buyer tax credit that ended in April. That pending sales during October were essentially the same as September suggests that perhaps November sales may be in the vicinity of the October figure of 456 closed sales. That’s because pending sales are a leading indicator for closed sales in the following month.
On the other hand, as economists like to say, it’s cold. In Albuquerque the winter months, January and February in particular, are the slowest for home sales. So we’ll see.